Summer Slipped Away
by Military Mechanic
Summary: On the edge of town, there's a house. Pleasant and nice to look at, it does nothing to prepare a visitor for the secrets hidden within; Konan Akatsuki's Home, as it's called, is nothing like it seems. The children that live there are all different, all so very strange, and this new boy is the oddest of them all, sending lives spiraling out of control.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Da-da-dah; here's another story for anyone that cares. I couldn't decide on just one character to write it about, so you get this! And...does anyone even check under such a general tag? Huh, I guess I'm going to find out. xD

* * *

There's a house that sits just on the edge of Konoha, where no one likes to go. It's all stone and brick and victorian era, with three stories and an attic. A small porch sticks off of the front of the house, and there's a white-wood swing hanging there, a path that's lined with flowers; red, blue, yellow, and pink. The path leads down to the road, which is dirt and curving and almost never driven on.

Right off to the side of this road sits a mailbox. The tin is dented, and it's dark blue paint is rusted and in desperate need of a second coat. On the side of the mailbox is a plaque, white and simple, with two words written on it.

Konan Akatsuki.

She owns this house and, at one point in time, she was a very popular woman among the town of Konoha. Years ago, she owned a flower shop - and then one day, out of no where, a 'CLOSED' sign was hung and she moved, away from town and the hustle and bustle of neighbors, and out to here, on the very edge of the forest, where she opened a new business.

Except it isn't really a business, because she doesn't make money off of it. Houseing these children...It's not a job for her, but just _life_ - and the people in town don't understand that, can't understand that, and so they slap the label of "freak" on her just as easily as they do on her children.

Isn't that life, though?

This house, Konan's house, looks peaceful on the outside. It matches the appearance of the woman who owns it. Quaint and unassuming, yet beautiful all the same.

A complete opposite of the inside, which is loud and bustling and always moving, always changing, never stopping. And so very, very different from everything that the rest of the town is used too.

So, like all new things and strange things, they fear it.

Those children, who have all taken the name of Akatsuki as their own.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Eyup. Not much to say about this story at all, except that I've never written for any of these characters before and I'm hoping you all can't tell that.

* * *

Deidara lives on the third floor of the victorian style house. He's lived there for five years already, and is the first child that Konan takes on. When the government issued worker comes to drop him off, Konan is waiting for him. She stands on the front porch with her blue hair tucked behind her ears and a slight smile on her face, and she seems welcoming, which is an odd thought for the young blond.

He isn't used to adults that are welcoming.

So he puts on the breaks just at the foot of the stone steps leading up to the porch, and the man beside him digs fingers into his shoulders trying to get him take another step.

"Come on, Deidara." he says, and his voice is harsh and impatient. "I told you that now is not the time to play around."

Deidara refuses to move, going so far as to take a hesitant step away from the porch. He glances around, and then his one good eye, the one that isn't covered by thick locks of blond hair, the one that is still blue, it spots the forest to his left. For a moment, he wonders whether or not he can make it there.

"Deidara?" questions Konan, and her voice suits her. Soft but firm. Pleasant, but not simpering.

It catches the blond's attention, and he tilts his head to look at her. She smiles and doesn't speak, just steps to the side and motions to the open doorway. The government man, who had never even bothered to introduce himself, is already in his sleek, shining car and driving away.

Defeated, Diedara lets out a soft sigh and gives in.

-x-x-x-

This isn't the first foster home that Deidara has been in. Far from it, actually. It's his seventh. Or maybe his eighth? Hell, at this point, he doesn't even remember. Just knows that this place is different.

Konan is the only other person who lives here, which is a change in and of itself. Deidara is used to screaming children, to having to push and shove and burn just to get a smidge of attention, to get his fair share of the food or be able to sleep in his own bed.

Here, all he has to do is ask.

It should be comforting. Finally having an adult to himself. Having the attention now, at fourteen, that he didn't have when he was younger, when he really needed it. But it isn't. It's so damn frustrating, because now Deidara doesn't know what to do with himself.

-x-x-x-

Deidara has thick, long blond hair. It reaches down to his hips, almost, and just sort of hangs there. Every morning, he brushes it out and arranges his bangs, moving the hair so it falls in front of his eyes and tries to keep his hands down, to avoid brushing it to the side. That's how he's worn his hair for years.

Since he was seven, actually.

Since the accident.

One day, he's downstairs, in the living room. Just sitting there, on the over-stuffed white couch that sits in the middle of the room, surrounded by potted plants and shelves stacked high with books he has never bothered to read. His light blue eye, the one with the least amount of hair hanging over it, is focused on the bizzarly patterend wallpaper, trying to find shapes in the dark green swirls.

Behind him, he can hear the front door open. The click-clack of his heels. Then a slight thunk, as it's closed once more.

"Deidara? I'm home." calls Konan, just as she always does, whether she gets an answer or not.

Today, her answer comes in the form of a grunt. Which is an improvement, because for the longest time her charge just ignored her.

Konan sets her purse down on the floor, then heads into the living room. Pauses behind the couch and watches for a moment, then she places a hand on the young mans shoulder. "Your hair is a mess."

Deidara wrinkles his nose, tilting his head back to look at the older woman. "What?"

"Your hair." repeats Konan, and this time she runs a few pale fingers through his golden tresses. "It needs to be cut."

"Hands off, yeah!" snaps Deidara, scooting forward and onto the edge of his seat. He shifts slightly, narrowing his eyes at the blue haired woman. "My hair's fine. I like it long!"

"There's a difference between being long and just being a mess." says Konan, but she doesn't move to touch it again. Instead, she turns and starts down the hall, towards the first floor bathroom. "If you want, I can see if I can do something with it."

-x-x-x-

He doesn't know why he follows her. Certainly not because he wants her to mess with his hair. No, he likes his hair. He likes the fact that it's long and decieving and it works well to hide his eye, anyway, so wasn't that a plus?

Yes, of course it was. No one wanted to stare at that mess, least of all Deidara.

Still, he finds himself getting to his feet and heading towards the bathroom. The house is quiet, like always, and the only sound he can hear is the flip-flop of bare feet hitting the cold floor.

It's nerve-wracking, because he's used to noise and bustle and heat and what kind of a home is this, anyway? Nothing like the ones that he's been in before - and that thought is re-enforced when he stops just outside of the bathroom and watches as Konan pulls things out of the medicine cabinet.

"Are you going to let me work with your hair?" she asks, not looking towards him.

Deidara pauses. Shuffles his feet. Then slowely moves in to join her.

"Depends on what you want to do with it." he answers, sideling over to the marble counter she's standing in front of. It's in front of a mirror; and suddenly he understands what she means, looking at the tangled mass of hair that hangs over his shoulders and in his face.

He looks homeless - and that's why Konan is doing this, he decides, because she doesn't want to be associated with him and school starts just a few weeks from then.

The thought of school and the problems that it brings distracts Deidara enough that he doesn't notice when she begins to snip off the dead-ends. Isn't paying attention until nimble fingers are sifting through his hair and drawing it back, and then he is tensing and debating on running and is it too late?

No, it isn't too late, but Konan isn't pulling the hair away from his left eye. Just rearranging it, sliding his bangs to one side and pulling what won't stay there back. Gathers some of the hair off of his back, and then pulling it up and up, taking the extra bang pieces with it, and securing it into a pony-tail on the top of his head.

Suddenly, he doesn't look like a lost child any more.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: So I actually managed to get all three of these chapters written up tonight. I'm amazed! I don't normally get things written so quickly.

* * *

People are bastards. That's something that Deidara has learnt, time and time again. There isn't a reason to it, no cause or action or excuse. It just is.

And bastards, the blond knows, tend to move in packs. They also tend to fill the halls in school, no matter the grade or location - and, God, is it really that close to the end of winter?

Deidara's calender says it is.

The top half shows off a sleek, black car. It looks sort of like the one that brought him here, to Konan's, but he doesn't know cars well. That means that he's probably wrong and, Hell, it's not like he's paying much attention to the top half, anyway.

No, his eye is locked on the bottom page. The one that lists the month and the days of the week, and a lot of them are crossed off at this point. Each one with a bright purple "X" right in the middle of the box. There's a red circle around the twentieth, which is only three days away.

"Back to the wolves, yeah." he mutters to himself, face twisting into an angry scowl. Then he's suddenly not thinking and he's just _moving_ and ripping the offending group of pages off of the wall.

-x-x-x-

Her house smells of smoke. That's the first thing that Konan notices when she walks inside - and she supposes that it's about time something like this has happened. Then she hopes that Deidara hasn't set anything important on fire.

Letting out a heavy sigh through her noise, Konan closes the front door behind her and sits the bag of groceries down beside it. Then she follows the acrid odor of something burning and starts moving up, up, up the stairs and onto the third floor.

Here, she can actually see the smoke. Thin whisps of grey that trail along her ceiling, coiling about the antique looking light fixtures and just out of reach of her smoke alarms. As expected, it's coming from the fourth door from the stairwell, on the left.

Deidara's room.

For a moment, she stands outside of the door. Then her lips tug into a frown and she all but marches down the hall, moving to stand in the entrance of her first charge's room. Deidara's perched on the edge of his bed, bare feet resting on the metal rung that supports the mattress, hands clutching the sheets so hard that the knuckles have begun to turn white. His head is tilted to the side slightly, blond hair framing his face in a way that belies innocence, not destruction. His sharp, blue eye is focused on the trash bin in front of him.

Rather, it's focused on the flames sparking within its metal confines.

They are twining together, all red and heat and disaster in the making, twisting in a dance that is so beyond anyone's control. And there's a spark in Deidara's eye that isn't usually there, as he watches the all-consuming fire devour the calender. With it, his worries are also consumed, if only for a few moments.

In the doorway, Konan crosses her arms over her chest. Clears her throat. And doesn't get a single response, not even a glance. He's too focused on the fire that is now licking at the edge of the basket, too focused on the fact that everything he feels is in there and being burnt to a crisp, and God damn, it felt good to watch it burn!

"Deidara." snapped Konan, and the teen was suddenly jerking his head to look at her, eye wide in surprise. And the light was gone now, replaced with confusion, then with horror.

He shifts, and one hand reaches for the trash can in front of him, almost like he isn't thinking. Konan, personally, doesn't see what it is that he could be planning on doing with it. she doesn't stay to find out, either.

As she leaves, she tosses a terse, "open the window, before my house starts to stink", and then she closes the door behind her.

-x-x-x-

Later that day, Konan calls him down to the living room. Deidara isn't entirely sure what to expect, a threat maybe, or possibly just a packed suit-case and the time of when a car will be there to pick him up. He isn't expecting Konan to be sitting on the couch, a mug of something hot and slightly bitter smelling clasped in her hands.

"Uh, yeah?" asks Deidara, hesitating at the edge of the room.

Konan looks up at him and raises an eyebrow. Then she lays down the rules of the house, as they apply to Deidara.

Her house is not to smell of smoke, for any reason.

What he burns, he buys. If he doesn't buy it, then he pays for it afterwards.

She expects some common sense to be used. If her house is burnt down, she tells him, she's going to know who to blame. She's also going to know who to bill - and the fact that he has no money and no job doesn't matter to her.

Then she tells him that he can go, and waves a hand; and, damn, if that doesn't confuse Deidara all the more.

-x-x-x-

Konan makes breakfast the next morning, just like she always does. That morning she's made a batch of pancakes, and they are already spread out on the table when Deidara meanders downstairs sometime around nine.

Something else that sets this new house apart from his old ones, he notes, is that almost everything is home-cooked. Even if it isn't, if it's ordered in or just frozen pizza, it's always eaten at the table, together.

They don't pray before they eat, so as soon as Deidara takes a seat, a starts loading up his plate. Three pancakes and a large pile of butter later, he finally manages to mutter out a good morning.

"Good morning to you too, Deidara." says Konan, offering him a slight smile over her coffee.

They don't speak after that until the very end, when the host-mother forces Deidara to help load everything into the dish washer and put the left-overs in the fridge. Then Konan pulls a crumpled bill out of her jeans and shoves it at the blond.

"What's this for?" asks Deidara, surprised. He fumbles for the folded up money, stretching it out and gaping at it once he gets it in both hands. "Why'm I getting a fifty?"

"School starts in two days." answers Konan, voice firm and unwavering. "You still need to get your supplies."

"But-" Deidara starts, but a slight frown forms on the older womans face and that, he decides, isn't a good thing.

So he turns on his heel and slips out of the house.


End file.
